Food Standards Agency reveals some labelling terms, such as Fresh, Pure and Natural still mislead

Thursday 12 February 2004

Agency encourages more food manufacturers to follow best practice guidelines

Ref: 2004/0462

The results of a nationwide survey carried out on behalf of the Food Standards Agency show that consumers are still being misled by the use of terms such as 'fresh' and 'natural' on some food labels.

Many manufactures are following the best practice guidance issued by the Agency on the clearest way to use such terms but the labelling of over a third of the samples examined (40%) were still considered to be misleading or ambiguous.

In July 2002, the Agency issued advice on the use of eight marketing terms currently used on food labels in the UK: fresh; pure; natural; traditional; original; authentic; home made and farmhouse. This guidance described when and how these terms should be used, ensuring that consumer are not mislead.

Rosemary Hignett, Head of Food Labelling and Standards at the Food Standards Agency said: 'We know that consumers often place particular value on terms like fresh, pure and natural when buying food. They rightly expect foods labelled with these terms to be different in some way from products that don't carry these types of descriptions. For instance, they don't expect items labelled fresh to have a four-week shelf life, they don't expect items labelled as pure to have added ingredients and they don't expect products with ingredients described as natural to have used artificial preservatives and additives.

'We've based our guidance on these expectations and our survey shows that many manufacturers are taking account of this and are giving consumers clear descriptions; but others obviously have a long way to go. We will now be looking at ways to encourage a greater uptake of the guidance and there by ensure that the interests of consumers are better protected.'

In order to check the extent to which the guidance is currently being followed, the Agency enlisted the help of enforcement officers from 15 local authorities across the UK. They were asked to collect food samples from their areas, which used one or more of the terms, and to establish whether the labelling used on the products followed the Agency's guidance. The findings were later audited by a leading public analyst.

A total of 220 foods were examined and the results showed some problems with the use of all eight terms.

Terms	Number of samples	Number of adverse reports	Percent of adverse reports
Farmhouse	24	18	75%
Traditional	75	33	44%
Home made	21	9	43%
Original	25	10	40%
Natural	23	8	35%
Fresh	26	7	27%
Authentic	15	2	13%
Pure	11	1	9%
Total samples:	220	88	40%

The two areas where the misuse of descriptive terms was most widespread was in the use of the words farmhouse and traditional.

The guidance for the term farmhouse states that this should only be used where the product has been made in a house on a farm, or more specifically in the main dwelling of the farmer himself. twenty four food samples examined used this term. However, for 18 of them (75%) there was clear evidence, or indications, that they were actually produced in industrial premises.

The word traditional was widely used on the labels of the foods sampled: 75 were examined in this category. However, over one third (33 samples) didn’t follow the guidance. thirty one of the samples that called themselves traditional used modern ingredients such as artificial additives, preservatives or sweeteners, which the public analysts did not consider would have been part of the original recipe. A further two samples used the term traditional-style, which the guidance considers to be meaningless.

Full details of the products sampled, including those that did not follow the guidance, can be found in the survey report An investigation of the use of terms such as Natural, Fresh etc in Food Labelling February 2004.

The guidance was created following an investigation of food claims by the independent Food Advisory Committee (FAC). The FAC raised concerns that some manufacturers were misleading consumers through the use of terms on food labels and that tighter enforcement of these terms was necessary.

The results of the survey have been sent to the relevant companies and the responses received are published as part of the report. The results have also been sent to local authorities and the Agency is encouraging them to take action if appropriate, and to consider the results while prioritising their own food sampling programmes.